Yvan Hostettler

Open calligraphe.ch today and the whole homepage is one message: "Désolé, site web en reconstruction, revenez au printemps!" Sorry, the website is under reconstruction, come back in the spring. Under it, a single line points anywhere else for now: "Ancien site toujours actif: allo987.wixsite.com/monsite," the old site is still active. The browser tab still reads "Company Name," an unfilled template default rather than the business's own name, and the footer's copyright line runs straight from "Copyright ©" into a comma with no name filled in between. The only working parts of the live site are a contact form, described as functioning, and a Geneva address, Chemin des Ouches 2, postal code 1203. Everything past this paragraph comes from the older site it points to and from 2 independent professional craft directories, not from the current homepage, because the current homepage has nothing else to read.

The older site, copyrighted 2019 and still reachable through the link above, names the person behind both addresses: Yvan Hostettler, who sums himself up in one line as "Calligraphe par passion. Coach par empathie," a calligrapher by passion, a coach by empathy. His training is specific and it checks out against an outside source. He apprenticed as a typographer (conducteur-typographe) and holds a 1978 certificate from the Imprimerie de Versoix in Geneva, according to the Métiers d'Art craft directory that lists him. From there he moved into graphic design at the Ecole des Arts Décoratifs de Genève, then into calligraphy, which he studied in California, at San Luis Obispo and at Berkeley. He is a member of the Société suisse de calligraphie, the Swiss calligraphy society, and the same craft directory lists him as a participant in JEMA, the Journées Européennes des Métiers d'Art, the annual European crafts open weekend.

A Fondation Martin Bodmer role, described 2 different ways

His own site calls the connection past tense: "Ex-coach calligraphe à la Fondation Martin Bodmer," former calligraphy coach at the Fondation Martin Bodmer, the manuscript museum in Cologny. The national Métiers d'Art directory describes the same relationship in the present tense, saying that alongside his calligraphy courses he "dispense," gives, ongoing summer courses at the foundation. A separate Geneva Métiers d'Art directory names 3 more institutions he has worked with beyond Bodmer: the Musée d'ethnographie de Genève, the MRL (Maison Rousseau et Littérature) and the Fondation Michel Butor in Lucinges, France. None of the 3 sources settles whether the Bodmer teaching is current or past, and they genuinely disagree rather than one simply predating the other, so it reads here as an open question rather than a fact either way.

He is also a public speaker on the subject. A talk called "De la typographie à la calligraphie en passant par le graphisme," from typography to calligraphy by way of graphic design, first ran at the Musée d'Ethnographie de Genève in March 2019, as part of a francophone event called "Dis-moi dix mots." His own site prices the format at 45 minutes plus 15 for questions, asks only for a projector, and can be followed by an introductory calligraphy session for up to 20 people.

The last dated activity on record is from 2024

3 public workshops appear on the old site, all dated 2024 and none since. "L'atelier du scribe" ran over 2 days, 24 and 25 August, in St-Pierre-de-Clages in Valais, with separate children's sessions at 14:30 and 16:30 and a stand selling nibs, reed pens, books and pebble dedications. "Atelier Natur'écriture" followed on 15 September, on the banks of the Arve in Geneva, from 13:00 to 16:00. A 4-week evening course, "Initiation à la calligraphie latine," ran on 4 Tuesdays, 17 September, 1 October, 29 October and 5 November, at the Collège de Saussure in Lancy, Geneva, from 18:30 to 20:45; the general workshop format described elsewhere on the site is 4 sessions of 2 hours. None of the 3 lists a price, and nothing on any page checked here names a date later than November 2024.

The materials page sells kits, not services, and both are marked unavailable. A beginner set has 50 sheets of 60 g/m2 paper for practicing chancery and gothic hands. A discovery set has a wooden penholder, 5 steel Speedball nibs in sizes C6, C4, C2, C0 and B5, and a 10ml bottle of black ink. Both read "Epuisé," sold out, with no price shown for either while they were available. The same page recommends the Pilot Parallel Pen, specifically the 2.4mm nib, for beginners, but sends buyers to ordinary Swiss stationery shops to find one rather than selling it himself.

Nothing checked here mentions a wedding

That absence is the finding this listing turns on. The current site says nothing about services of any kind. Across the old site's 6 pages (home, Evénements, Ateliers, Matériel, Création, Conférence) and both independent craft directories, the pattern repeats: calligraphy taught as a discipline, calligraphy performed at cultural institutions, calligraphy sold as starter materials to learn it yourself. Not once, anywhere, is it framed as a service for wedding invitations, save the dates, place cards or any other stationery a couple would commission. None of the practical numbers a couple would need before hiring him for wedding work, a minimum order, a lead time, a proof and revision policy, a bespoke-versus-collection choice, a price for a single piece, appears anywhere either, and that is not the site withholding them: none of the sources describe a stationery commission process at all, wedding or otherwise, for those numbers to attach to.

What is genuinely there is a well-documented, institutionally connected calligraphy practice. The typographer's certificate, the formal calligraphy study in California, the membership in the national calligraphy society, the listing in the craft registry, the paid teaching and talks at a Geneva manuscript museum and its ethnography museum: these hold up across independent sources that were never written to agree with each other, which is exactly why the one place they disagree, on whether the Bodmer teaching still runs, is worth taking at face value rather than smoothing over. A couple set on hand calligraphy for a Swiss wedding, an envelope lettered by hand, a reading kept as a keepsake in his hand, would be reaching someone with real standing in that craft. What they would not be doing, on anything published anywhere right now, is booking a wedding stationery studio in the ordinary sense of a catalogue, a price and a delivery date. The honest next step is the contact form on calligraphe.ch, the one part of the current site that works, with a direct question about whether commissions of any kind, wedding or otherwise, are open while the rebuild is underway.